Comment on Why are there so many graybeards in FOSS?
syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
One rather obvious reason is that society has a lot of greybeards in general. The baby boomer generation was named that for a reason, and people have been living longer on average. Lots of countries are struggling with the demographic effects. There’s no reason to expect that tech or something even more specific like FOSS would be exempt.
Another aspect here is that FOSS is still kind of new in society. There’s just more people who have had the chance to age into FOSS greybeards than when those greybeards were young. (And they were thus likely to a lesser degree blocked by entrenched greybeards when they were getting started.)
wewbull@feddit.uk 6 days ago
People born in the 50s have long retired. The grey beards are not baby-boomers. They are people born in the late 60s and 70s. They are people who grew up as computing technology matured. They started coding low level and had careers building the infrastructure of computing which is what a lot of FOSS is.
However the question is not why these people have aged? It’s why hasn’t there been a steady stream of people taking their place from younger generations?
I believe it’s because the generations after them have careers working at higher levels of abstraction. Often going lower level is seen as black magic that is unknown to them.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
There may be some truth to that, but seeing Rust take off means there’s still interest in lower level languages. Rust is making its way to the Linux kernel and other established FOSS projects, which improves the chances for people uncomfortable with C-style languages to get involved.
But I think the explanation is simpler: younger people don’t have the time for FOSS, and few companies pay people to work on FOSS. So these graybeards are either grandfathered into the few roles that exist, or have sufficient time (e.g. kids moved out/largely independent).
barsoap@lemm.ee 6 days ago
I’m perfectly comfortable with C, it’s a neat, small, language. I actually understand the whole of the semantics (at least the POSIX ones). I also happen to speak x86 assembly quite fluently (as long as it’s not SIMD noone speaks that fluently, last time I actually wrote assembly in earnest x87 was still relevant). The thing is though I’m more comfortable with Rust, even if I don’t understand absolutely everything: Because it’s less mental load. I don’t need to worry about so many things at once, don’t have to keep a thousand assumptions in mind that that pieces of code I’m not currently working on are making.
No, driving a unicycle instead of the metro doesn’t make you a better commuter. It makes you a better unicycle driver.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’ve noticed that a lot in newer users.
Even in technical fields, the users know how to use the software but they don’t understand anything under that. A lot of people got into computer via smartphones where you are essentially locked out of anything below the application layer.